Approaches to the Critical Reading Section

　　Work on sentence completion questions first. They take less time to answer than the passage-based reading questions. The difficulty of sentence completion questions increases as you answer them in order. Reading questions do not increase in difficulty from easy to hard. Instead, they follow the logic of the passage. The information you need to answer each reading question is always in the passage(s). Reading carefully is the key to finding the correct answer. Don't be misled by an answer that looks correct but is not supported by the actual text of the passage(s). Reading questions often include line numbers to help direct you to the relevant part(s) of the passage. If one word or more is quoted exactly from the passage, the line number(s) where that quotation can be found will appear in the test question. You may have to read some of the passage before or after the quoted word(s), however, in order to find support for the best answer to the question. Do not jump from passage to passage. Stay with a passage until you have answered as many questions as you can before you proceed to the next passage. If you don't know what a word means in a sentence completion or reading passage, consider related words, familiar sayings and phrases, roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Have you ever heard or seen a word that may be related to it? In your test booklet, mark each question you don't answer so that you can easily go back to it later if you have time. Remember that all questions are worth the same number of points regardless of the type or difficulty.